LG is opening the show with its CES press conference. Many consumer electronics companies are going to show us their new and shiny products all day long. And LG is starting at 8 AM Pacific, 11 AM Eastern, 2 PM in London.
You can expect new TVs (4K? 8K? The sky is the limit), more info on that funny beer machine and maybe a few surprises. Check out our full CES coverage.
Sony is holding its CES press conference today at 5 PM Pacific, 8 PM Eastern. The company will talk about all of its new devices, from connected speakers to cameras, TVs and maybe even turntables. Sony’s press conference is usually packed with product announcements.
We’ll have a team on the ground, so you should also check out our full CES coverage.
Samsung is holding its CES press conference today at 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern, 10 PM in London. The company will unveil its new lineup of consumer electronics devices. You should expect a wide range of new products, from smart watches to washing machines.
We’ll have a team on the ground, so you should also check out our live blog for our first-hand impressions of the announcements.
Maybe you won’t need a glitter bomb to protect your Amazon packages from porch thieves after all. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Canadian appliance maker Danby is showing off its newly launched smart mailbox called Parcel Guard, which allows deliveries to be left securely at customers’ doorsteps. The box offers both a drop-in slot for smaller items, as well as a safe with a separate door for larger items. When packages are left, you’re alerted to their arrival by way of a push notification from the Parcel Guard app.
It’s worth noting that Parcel Guard doesn’t require the delivery driver to adjust their routine. And it looks very obviously like a mailbox – right down to its little red flag on the side. There’s not much confusion about what it’s for.
However, the box will also come with an informational sticker you can place on the front that instructs drivers to drop packages here instead of leaving them by the door.
The mailbox’s anti-theft drop-in slot is like those found on USPS mailboxes. Once the package goes in, there’s no way to reach in and pull it back out.
For large (or fragile) items that need to be placed inside the box instead of dropped, the driver simply scans the package which triggers the safe door to unlock.
When the door is shut, the Parcel Guard locks and you’re alerted.
The box also includes wireless connectivity, a motion-activated IP camera (so you can see the delivery in action), a tamper alarm, and a weight monitor.
For additional security, you can opt to bolt the mailbox to the wall or the ground. There’s even a false bottom in the box – in case you want to secure it from being easily moved by placing something like a bag of sand under the bottom cover instead.
While protecting against package theft is Parcel Guard’s primary purpose, it can also be used for other purposes – like if friend or neighbor needs to drop something off at your home, for example, or even just to protect packages from bad weather.
To retrieve your packages, you unlock the box with the app.
The mailbox is made of industrial grade plastic, and includes a battery backup in the event of a power outage.
But it’s not small – at 19.7″ x 15.9″ x 39.4″, it’s designed for people whose houses have entryways or larger doorsteps, not for those who live in apartments.
Parcel Guard is not the only device that’s trying to tackle the problem with package theft – there’s also a smart padlock called BoxLock doing the same, as well as a similar product called InBin. But the latter is designed to look more like a planter than a mailbox.
The Parcel Guard smart mailbox will be available for pre-order on Danby’s website for $399 starting this week.
Reviews of the Notebook Odyssey line have been…mixed. Hopefully the electronics giant can right the ship as it navigates the tricky waters of high-end gaming systems. At very least, the latest version of the line — unveiled tonight at CES in Vegas — certainly looks the part.
The 15.6 inch laptop features an aluminum design and a display attached with an innovative hinge connected only in the center to mimic a standalone monitor. The bezels have been shrunk down considerably as well, at 6.7 millimeters. The typewriter-style keyboard is backlit, as one would expect from their gaming laptop.
There are a few different performance pre-sets on-board here, too. Per Samsung,
Odyssey Mode allows users to save settings presets under different profiles for various types of games. Beast Mode lets users modulate the Samsung Notebook Odyssey’s performance depending on the software it is running, and the Black Equalizer helps users get a leg up on the competition by improving in-game lighting.
Inside you get an eighth-gen hexa-core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and either 256GB (SSD) to 1TB (HDD) of storage. Graphics-wise, you’re getting an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080, featuring the new Turing GPU. There’s a fairly healthy selection of ports, as well, including USB-C, three full USB, HDMI and Ethernet.
The new Odyssey is due out at some point “early” this year. No word yet on pricing.
Acer today announced two new gaming laptops at CES, the 17-inch $4,000 Predator Triton 900 with a convertible 4K display and the somewhat more affordable all-metal 15-inch $1,800 Triton 500. What sets these laptops apart is, among a few other interesting features and some interesting design choices, support for Nvidia’s new(ish) RTX 2080 GPUs, the most powerful graphics processors on the market today.
The Triton 900 features the RTX 2080 by default, while you’ll have to shell out an extra $700 to get it on the Triton 500. Otherwise, the specs are very much what you’d expect from a modern gaming laptop, with 8th generation Intel i7 chips, 16GB of base memory (with the option of going up to 32GB) and up to a terabyte of NVMe-based storage.
The Triton 900’s flipping screen is a bit of a gimmick, but it doesn’t look bad and the company argues that it’ll allow for “multiple gaming scenarios and better ergonomics.” I’m not sure ergonomics is top of mind for most gamers who are willing to shell out $4,000 for a laptop, but it can’t hurt either. The 4K display is a touchscreen, too, which could make it interesting as a more high-end portable workstation for creative work. If you’re a gamer, though, you’ll likely be more excited about the built-in Xbox wireless receiver and audio by Waves, which offers head tracking to provide you a more realistic 3D audio experience
Unsurprisingly, the Triton 500 is the more “sensible” option here, with a more palatable starting price, slim design (it’s 0.7 inches thick and weighs in at 4.6 lbs) and the promise of eight hours of battery life. You only get a full HD display, though, with even the base model comes with an RTX 2060 card, which is no slouch either and should easily be able to let you play and modern game at its maximum graphics settings in HD.
A veteran TV maker just got a notable refresh as it enters the age of connected devices. Xiaomi, the Beijing-based firm best known for budget smartphones, has bought 65.2 million shares, or 0.48 percent, of Chinese home appliance maker TCL, said TCL in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Sunday.
Shares of TCL, the world’s third-largest LCD TV manufacturer, jumped nearly 4 percent in morning trading on Monday, giving the company a market cap of $36 billion.
The financial gesture deepens an existing alliance between the duo. On December 29, the companies signed a strategic partnership that would see them collaborate on various fronts, including R&D in integrating smart devices with “core, high-end, and basic” electronic parts. To put in layman’s terms, the joint effort focuses on chips and will make it easier for TCL devices to incorporate into Xiaomi’s operating system, where an expanding universe of third-party gadgets reside. The partners may also make co-investments in the hardware field.
The tie-up provides “tremendous help” for Xiaomi as it ups the ante in home appliances, wrote Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun on Weibo, China’s closest answer to Twitter, in a reply to TCL’s CEO Li Dongsheng. During the third quarter of 2018, smart TVs helped drive revenue growth for Xiaomi’s non-smartphone hardware segment, shows the company’s financial results.
“[Our partnership] helps facilitate the transformation and upgrade of China’s manufacturing industry,” wrote Li, whose company started in 1981 as a cassette manufacturer.
Xiaomi has long been keen to team up with manufacturers to make its own branded devices instead of producing them itself. By early 2018, Xiaomi reached nearly 100 such partners, many of which Xiaomi had invested in to harness bargaining power in the supply chain, from what a smartphone should look like to how much it’s priced at. Xiaomi’s retail stores — available online and in physical manifestations — have also opened doors to third-party brands in an effort to broaden product selection.
Xiaomi’s close ties with its ecosystem partners result in an inventory of affordable products rivaling the likes of Fitbit and Apple. During the third quarter of 2018, Xiaomi topped the global chart by shipping 6.9 million units of wearables. Apple and Fitbit came in second and third with 4.2 million units and 3.5 million units, respectively, according to market research firm IDC.
Xiaomi derives most of its revenues from smartphones, though Lei Jun has long envisioned a future in which internet services will be the firm’s main force. This segment, which Xiaomi has marketed as its key financial differentiator against other phone brands, includes sales from mobile games, internet finance, paid content among a slew of services available through Xiaomi’s connected devices.
At its CES press conference today, Nvidia broke with tradition and put the focus on gaming, not self-driving cars and data center AI technologies, the typical topics of this event. After a (far too long) recap of everything Nvidia announced the RTX 2060, the low-end version of its new Turing-based desktop graphics cards.
The new card will cost $349, which is quite a bargain. It’ll be available on January 15.
The card will offer 52 teraflops of Tensor Core processing power, can handle 5 gigarays per second and features a 6GB frame buffer. Traditionally, the xx60 series has always been the low-end version of the GeForce series, though they are no slouch either. The 2060, Nvidia promises, will offer somewhere between 1.4 and 2x performance benefit over its 1060 counterpart. That makes it faster than the 1070Ti cards.
The company demoed the new card with an exquisite real-time demo of Battlefield 5, optimized for using its new RTX ray-tracing technology and running at a resolution of 1440p.
“Next-gen gaming starts today for tens of millions of gamers everywhere,” said Huang. “Desktop gamers are demanding, and the RTX 2060 sets a new standard — an unbeatable price, extraordinary performance and real-time ray tracing that blurs the distinction between movies and games. This is a great moment for gamers and our industry.”
It might be strange to imagine now, but it was only a few years ago when the presence of Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming platforms at major award shows was considered disruptive. Today’s Golden Globes showed how formidable streaming platforms have become, with Netflix’s “Roma” winning the awards for best foreign language film and best director, strong harbingers for success at next month’s Academy Awards (“Roma” previously won the Golden Lion, the Venice Film Festival’s highest honor).
Written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma” was one of the best reviewed films of 2018 and its award prospects prompted Netflix to change its long-standing theatrical release model for original films.
When Netflix had previously agreed to release its films in theaters, it did so without granting the theaters an exclusive release window. Instead, it insisted that its movies could only be released in theaters if they premiered on its streaming service at the same time. As a result, few theaters carried Netflix films and the rule may have hurt some films’ chances of being nominated for major awards. For example, the Cannes Film Festival implemented a rule last year that effectively barred Netflix films from competing.
Roma’s prospects and its pedigree (Cuarón won an Oscar for directing “Gravity”) gave Netflix enough incentive to change its policies. Along with “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” directed by the Coen Brothers, and “Bird Box,” directed by Susanne Bier, “Roma” was given an exclusive theatrical run in some markets, opening a few weeks before being released on Netflix.
Cuarón was also nominated for a best screenplay-motion picture at the Golden Globes, but lost that award to “Green Book” writers Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, and Brian Currie.
Some shows that usually dominate the list of Golden Globe winners, including HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Netflix’s “The Crown” weren’t eligible to compete this year, making room for other productions to shine. Netflix had a total of 13 nominations (eight for TV series and five for films), Amazon received nine nominations for TV series, and Hulu earned two nominations for “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Variety is live-updating a full list of nominations and winners here).
Other victories for streaming services included Rachel Brosnahan’s win for best performance by an actress in a television series–musical or comedy for Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” while “A Very English Scandal’s” Ben Whishaw scored another acting win for Amazon by landing the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, limited series or motion picture made for television.
The star of Netflix’s “Bodyguard” (originally produced for the BBC), Richard Madden, won best performance by an actor in a television series-drama for star Richard Madden.
Getting a good night’s sleep is a universal desire for the human race. At the Consumer Electronics Show today, UrgoNight showed off its non-invasive solution to train your brain to sleep better. It’s designed to teach your brain to sleep better using electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements and app-based brain exercises.
UrgoNight requires you to wear the device for 20 minutes a day, three times a week for three months. It uses positive feedback to show you what brain processes and mental activities work best to produce the brainwaves associated with better sleep.
“What we do is help you produce more of these brain waves,” UrgoNight CTO Robin Reynaud told TechCrunch.
The idea is to use it during the day, perhaps after work, before you go to sleep. It’s not meant to be worn during sleep.
UrgoNight claims it can help you fall asleep 40 percent faster and reduce how often you wake up in the middle of the night by 53 percent. Three months after you complete your first round, UrgoNight suggests repeating a conditioning session to make sure your brain is still optimized for the best sleep.
UrgoNight is set to come out later this year at a retail price of $600. It will be available for pre-order starting this spring, with deliveries arriving by the end of the year. UrgoNight is a CES 2019 Innovation Award honoree in the wearable technology category.